Camilla Mayer

High Wire, Swaypole

There have been several high wireA tight, heavy metallic cable placed high above the ground, on which wire walkers do crossings and various acrobatic exercises. Not to be confused with a tight wire. artists by the name of Camilla Mayer. It was actually a generic name adopted by the star female performers of the famous high wireA tight, heavy metallic cable placed high above the ground, on which wire walkers do crossings and various acrobatic exercises. Not to be confused with a tight wire. troupe of Camilio Mayer. The original Camilla Mayer, however, was Lotte Witte (1918-1940), who was born in 1918 in Stettin, Germany (today Szczecin, in Poland). The daughter of a plumber, and an artistcally-minded and very attractive young girl, she was sixteen when she joined Camilio's troupe in 1934. Fearless and talented, she soon became the troupe's star attraction(Russian) A circus act that can occupy up to the entire second half of a circus performance., and Camilio gave her as a "nom-de-scène" not only his family name, but also his first name: She become known as Camilla Mayer.

In 1936, when the troupe performed outdoors in the popular seaside resort of Atlantic City, in the United States, Lotte made the headlines performing on a fifty-three-meter-high (175 feet) swaypoleA high, flexible vertical pole (originally made of a single piece of wood, and today of fiberglass) atop of which an acrobat performs various balancing tricks., a daring feat that was heralded as a world record. Sadly, Lotte-Camilla was killed on January 20, 1940 when her much shorter twenty-meter swaypoleA high, flexible vertical pole (originally made of a single piece of wood, and today of fiberglass) atop of which an acrobat performs various balancing tricks. broke during the Menschen-Tiere-Sensationen show at the Deutschlande Halle in Berlin. Already famous, the name Camilla Mayer entered circus lore—as it often happens with artists who leave the field too early, at the height of their fame.

But Camilla Mayer had become the main draw of Camilio Mayer's troupe, and thus two subsequent artists replaced Lotte as Camilla Mayer: First, Ruth Hempel (later known as Ruth Herold), from Breslau, Germany, then Ruth Barwinske (1926-2005), who married Bob Gerry in 1947 (Alois Geryk, known as Bob Gerry, had been a member of the Camilio Mayer Troupe). Finally, Camilio met Annemarie Füldner in Stedten an der Ilm, near Weimar in Germany; Annemarie became his wife and performed with him around the world as Camilla Mayer from 1946 to 1961.

The Camilla Mayer Troupe

As the members of the Camilio Mayer Troupe came and went (a frequent occurrence with large performing troupes), Ruth Hempel/Camilla left the troupe in 1943 to create her own Camilla Mayer Troupe with another of Mayer's alumni, Hans Zimmer. Under the Nazi regime, the new troupe was soon banned from performing, and resumed its activities only at the end of WWII. In 1947, Ruth and her troupe participated in a documentary short on the original Camilla Mayer (Lotte Witte), Kurt Krigar's Artisten unter den Wolken. (In 1948, Hans Zimmer was sued by the only "true" Camilla Mayer, Camilio Mayer's own daughter, for wrongfully using her name&mdah;although she was not herself a performer.)

Then, another Camilla Mayer Troupe appeared when a French promoter allegedly rescued Hans Zimmer's bankrupt Camilla Mayer Troupe, and relaunched it under the management of a high wireA tight, heavy metallic cable placed high above the ground, on which wire walkers do crossings and various acrobatic exercises. Not to be confused with a tight wire. artist by the name of Werner. The Camilla Mayer of this new troupe was Margarethe Zimmerman. The troupe performed with the Radio Circus, where Margarethe appeared either as Camilla Mayer, Mam'zelle Lotus, or Margarethe Lotus, according the mood of the moment. A talented performer, Margarethe was featured (as Camilla Mayer) at the Cirque d'Hiver-Bouglione in Paris in 1948, and then with other French circuses. Margarethe Zimmerman is the biological mother of the multi-talented Gipsy Bouglione-Gruss, who was adopted as a baby by Firmin and Violette Bouglione.

See Also

• Camilla Mayer (Margarethe Zimmerman), High Wire, at the Cirque d'Hiver (Paris, 1948)

Suggested Reading

• Adolf George, Camilio Mayer, der Napoleon der Lüfte, (Frankfurt/Oder, Trowitzsch und Sohn, 1921)